If you’re a regular BBC Radio 4 You & Yours listener, you may have heard our founder and Managing Director Nic Seal being interviewed on 23rd March about how he grew Environet into the market-leading 100% employee-owned invasive plant specialist business it is today.
Gap Finders explores the story of one entrepreneur and how they grew a germ of an idea into a successful business by spotting a gap in the market and taking the plunge. It finds out what motivates that person, how they set out to do things differently and what they hoped to achieve, taking in the highs and the lows, the mistakes and the successes – and the people who had their back along the way.
Nic started Environet back in 1996 as an environmental consultancy. Whilst assessing contaminated land risk for a national gym chain, he came across Japanese knotweed for the first time.
That encounter helped him identify a need for knotweed removal and set him and Environet on the path to become trailblazers in the treatment and removal of invasive plants for homeowners and businesses. At first, he was a one-man band working out of the attic in his house and some people were sceptical about whether he’d be able to make a living out of “killing weeds”. But how wrong they were.
Over the next 25 years Nic and his wife, Bertie, grew Environet to become one of the UK’s leading invasive plant specialists, treating Japanese knotweed, bamboo Giant Hogweed and many other problematic plants.
Listen again to Nic’s Gap Finders story on BBC iPlayer.
